


No place like home

by ApatheticLexicographer



Category: Dream SMP - Fandom, Video Blogging RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Stockholm Syndrome, Toxic Relationships, all Dream know is abuse child cheat on he fiance and twerk, just Dream's canon shittiness, kind of?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-10
Updated: 2020-12-10
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,204
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27991941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ApatheticLexicographer/pseuds/ApatheticLexicographer
Summary: The concept of home has always been a weird one to Tommy. It’s not like he’s never had a home, he’s had plenty. Too many, in fact. It feels like every place, every person he loves takes away a little piece of him when he leaves it behind.There’s not much left to give any more.
Relationships: TommyInnit & Depression
Comments: 3
Kudos: 136





	No place like home

**Author's Note:**

> one line from tommy's latest stream really struck a chord with me so i just ran with it

The concept of home has always been a weird one to Tommy. It’s not like he’s never had a home, he’s had plenty. Too many, in fact. It feels like every place, every person he loves takes away a little piece of him when he leaves it behind.

There’s not much left to give any more.

Home has been a million things for Tommy. It’s been the people around him, for one. His family, who’s pieces of him were gifted gladly with the childish innocence of someone with no reason to believe that anybody they loved could hurt them. Wilbur, his older brother, with a song in his heart and a sparkle of mischief in his eyes. Wilbur the negotiator, the dictator, the madman. The ghost who trails him around like a lost puppy, desperately ignoring everything bad in the world. Technoblade, his idol. The undying Blood God, the warrior so fearsome that not even Dream could defeat him. Technoblade the traitor who cared more for anarchy than his own family, who would rather see Tommy dead than happy. Phil, his dad, who loved him as a child and then left the moment he could hold a sword. Who never responded to Tommy’s letters even once, never came when Tommy begged him to, but who arrived the moment he heard that Wilbur was in distress.

There are the traitors, the backstabbing bastards who tore their pieces of Tommy’s heart out with venomous claws. Schlatt and Eret, people who he looked up to and admired before they turned on him with power hungry eyes.

Then there’s everyone who claimed to be his friend, who’s little chunks of his soul were earned by what he thought was mutual trust. Once, Tommy had believed them when they said that they were his friends. Quackity, Ranboo, Niki, Fundy, Bad, the list goes on. They’ve all told him that they care about him, but then why would they let him go? Could none of them take the time out of their day to just pay him a visit?

And.

There’s Tubbo.

Tubbo, his best friend. His right hand man, his partner in crime and in government. Big T! The one person he could always count on to be there for him, right?

Right?

Until, when Tommy finally put himself first and L’Manburg second for the first time in so, so long, Tubbo told him he was being unreasonable. His best friend, the only person to ever earn his trust completely without shattering it once had him banished. He wouldn’t even look him in the eyes as he was cast out, dragged away by his worst enemy. Did Tommy really mean that little to him?

Tubbo didn’t just take a piece of his heart away, he broke it in half. Maybe people are more trouble than they’re worth, after all. But surely, though, Tommy has had other homes?

His home was the Dream SMP once, as odd as it feels to say. Back before there was any fighting, before he found his discs and Wilbur joined and everything went to shit his home was a tiny dirt shack carved into the hillside, destroyed and rebuilt so many times as to be unrecognizable. It was a snug cabin perched atop a mountain on the edge of the water, now only kept company by a grave and the ghosts that accompany it. Home was a bench nestled beneath a tree on the edge of a cliff, always within view of the sunset, with a music disc crackling gently away by his side.

Then Wilbur came, bringing with him war and strife and the promise of a new land, and that all changed. Now his home was L’Manburg, even if all that summed up to was a rickety van and a few trees that made better kindling than timber. It was his country and he would fight for it until his dying breath, and then his next, and his next. Even when Dream and his henchmen blew it up and set the place ablaze, even when he challenged Dream to a duel and lost, he never gave up hope. He handed over his discs and their nation’s fate was sealed.

L’manburg tore his heart out three times. 

Once, when the people voted against him, and if that wasn’t humiliation enough their favoured leader banned him from the very country he had founded. For some time after that home was a deep, narrow cave where the sun never shone. Buttons spread across the walls like a disease and Tommy felt his heart constrict again.

Twice, when the soil laced with explosives was finally detonated. All that was left of the once proud nation was a smoldering crater filled with soldiers who were little more than children, numb with shock as whatever else remained was wiped out by withers. It wasn’t gone, he tried to convince himself. They could rebuild, they could still thrive. Still, rubble is no home at all.

Thrice, and finally, when Tubbo loomed above him from atop the wall, and everyone he had counted as a friend looked on in pity but did nothing to help. He protested, he begged to be let back, but deep down he knew that he had been hurt one two many times to ever count that miserable crater as his home again.

So now where is he? Perched above a never ending sea of lava, twinless compass clutched in his fist. Sweat trickles down his skin; his grip might slip and drop the compass in anyway, even without trying. He flirts with the idea. Off behind him the portal out hums quietly, tendrils of purple smoke coiling toward him as if to beckon him. It would be so easy to step through, to feel his feet touch down on L’Manburg soil for the first time in days? Months?

But why? Dream’s right. They don’t want him there. In the best case they simply won’t care that he’s back, in the worst they’ll drive him out again before he can further inconvenience them. In Logstedshire he might not have much, but it’s all his. There’s his tent that he built with his own two hands, with only a little help. There’s Wilbur, and how fucking sad is it that out of everyone who once loved him the only one who stayed is the amnesiac ghost?

And there’s Dream, too. Tommy never thought he’d say it but he’s… not that bad, really? He’s right about a lot more things than Tommy had realised. None of the others care about him, not really, but Dream? Dream says he cares, and that’s a hell of a lot better than Tommy’s gotten from anybody else recently.

Tommy stands up and pockets the compass, still toying loosely with the chain. It would be so easy to… No. Think it over, like Dream said. He stares out at the lava lake for a few moments longer until he feels a hand clamp around his shoulder, grip firm and controlling and skin unnaturally cool for the fire-soaked biome. Tommy breaks his gaze and looks up at Dream, staring into the empty smile on his mask.

He smiles, shaky but resolute. “Let’s go home.”


End file.
